A while back, several companies began to offer a service for the conservative side of the culture wars that would help them participate in pop culture - adulterated movies. Companies would take DVDs and (back in the day) VHS tapes of popular movies and edit out all the "bad parts" to make them suitable for family viewing (one wonders if much would be left of something like Scarface after such treatment). Other companies would then rent the adulterated flicks. A Hollywood coalition of studios and directors (led by director Michael Apted) sued, alleging that the companies were violating various copyright provisions. Last week, a federal judge agreed and ordered the companies to shut down and surrender their stock to the plaintiffs. The ruling does not effect services that remove objectionable content from copies of movies actually owned by the viewers (presumably that's OK).
Monday, July 10, 2006
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2 comments:
I seem to recall that there was a similar suit planned against a special dvd player that automatically censored dirty words and scenes based upon a downloadable program that is updated periodically for new releases. I don't know how the ownership of the dvd changes that case because of the high likelihood that it would be used for infringement purposes on other dvds.
You're right about the suit against the DVD player, IIRC. I think that's a whole different story, however, 'cause it just makes it easier for the end user to skip stuff he doesn't want to see.
I have right to do that now, albeit manually. I call it the Dancing rule. Dancing is a Mike Keneally album (the last under the beloved Beer for Dolphins moniker) that's nearly 80 minutes long with 20 tunes, all of them excellent. Except one, "Only Mondays," which does nothing for me because it is exactly what Mike wanted it to be (sort of a Burt Bacharach pastiche). So I skip that tune when I listen to it - have it programed out of my CD player at work. I can't think that Mike (via his record company, of course) has any rights that are being violated in that instance.
I think the programable DVD is the same thing. As long as it doesn't scar a rented DVD in some way so that it prevents me from seeing all the juicy stuff and bad words when I watch it.
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